The areas which will benefit from the next phase of Digital Scotland's Superfast Broadband rollout have been announced.

Over 90,000 homes and businesses (in 18 local authority areas) will feel the fibre benefit from the £410 million programme, which offers speeds of up to 80Mbps (fibre-to-the-cabinet or FTTC).

Many of the places included in this latest deployment will be touched by the hand of fibre broadband for the first time, although some areas already have it, and will see additional locations connected.

The newcomers include Macduff, Glamis, Kirkwall, Annan, Kinglassie and Portmahomack, among many others. You can see the full list here (if you scroll down a little way).

The Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme aims to reach the areas not covered by commercial fibre deployment, and has already hooked up some 55,000 premises, with 750,000 homes and businesses expected to get connected by the initiative in total.

Given the commercial rollout and Digital Scotland's efforts combined, 95 per cent of Scotland is expected to have fibre broadband by the end of 2017/18.

Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister, commented: "Today marks another important milestone for the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband partnership. It's fantastic news that more communities and businesses around the country will soon begin to see the benefits of high quality digital connectivity, making them more economically viable in the long term."

She added: "However, this is not the limit of Scotland's ambition. The Scottish Government's aim is to deliver world class connectivity by 2020, enabling people across Scotland to connect any time, any place, anywhere using any device."